Realized last night that I am, in fact, not going to have another baby.

Judah and I had talked about children, you see. A lot. Because Judah really, really wanted kids. Judah was baby-crazy, I'd joke to everyone. Rarely did a week pass that he didn't talk about impregnating me.

And I'm 39, you know. And my body is not best suited to pregnancy at this point of disability. So there was a timecrunch factor, and some leeriness on my part. But Judah had to have a baby...

So I was thinking about that this morning, about the realization that I was definitely not having a baby now, about how it was a relief to have that pressure to breed anew off me...

I hear you. My first husband was like that, and one of my post-husband boyfriends. They were all totally ok with my flat-out statement, "I am not ever having kids. If you want them, I am not the relationship for you. I will not change my mind, and I plan to be sterilized as soon as I can get a doc to do it."

Jim was ok with that until we hit 6 months of marriage and then would hint. Then he would have days where we would see kids playing and he would get quiet. Then he made some bullshit statement about how I was not a real woman for not wanting kids.

Stephen was A-ok with it, until he grokked that, no shit, I was serious. He got mad at me for something unrelated and laid the smack down that we WERE going to have kids and how could I deny this to him if I really loved him. Our relationship survived maybe two more months.

I understand how much someone can want to please a partner and how big a deal kids are. It must have been pretty rough for you. /hugs.

You probably already know about this, since it seems to be based in Boston, but just in case, if not... there is a hotline specifically for LGBT/BDSM/Poly folks. They are called The Network/La Red. Here is their 24/7 crisis hotline: 617-742-4911. And their website: http://tnlr.org/

One of the kind counselors at RAINN's chat gave me their info last night. (After patiently listening to me ramble and abuse English in my anxiety). Thank you for pointing out that crisis center lines are for friends and family too. She helped me stop winding myself up with worry.

"...part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time."~~"Case of You", Joni Mitchell

"There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." ~~"Anthem", Leonard Cohen

"If you wanna be immortal, you gotta have something to trade in." ~~"Anything", Foetus

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."~~George Bernard Shaw

"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."~~Terence McKenna

"When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other."~~Rob Sheffield

"I have a sickness in the brain. I'm allowed to make no sense to you puny mortals with your fully operational head-meat."~~Spider Jerusalem

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."~~Lois McMaster Bujold

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."~~Albert Camus

"Being able to speak the unspeakable is very powerful. If we can hear another person express where they get stuck, or lost, or repeat a negative pattern, it builds a bridge."~~SARK

"Myths and legends die hard in America."~~Hunter S. Thompson

"Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible."~~Edwin Land

"Having faced the fire of your initiation and survived its heat, you can now serve others in a whole new way. By being a living testimony to life transformed, you carry in your cells a sacred knowledge, and in your mind and heart a sacred fire. It's not the fire of youth but the fire of Prometheus, who emerged with the light that would light the world. It's a light that you only could have gotten from having faced some version of your personal hell, and now you are inoculated to the fires which rage around us. Sometimes it is fire that puts out fire, and such is the fire that now burns in you. This is not the fire of your destruction but of your victory. It is the fire of the middle years."~~Marianne Williamson

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed…what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealously among the prime themes of literature."~~Virginia Woolf

"The Universe puts us in places were we can learn. They are never easy places, but they are right. Wherever we are is the right place, at the right time. The pain that sometimes comes is part of the process of constantly being born."

"I will tell you a great secret, Captain, perhaps the greatest secret of all time: The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside - that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And, as we have both learned, sometimes the Universe requires a change of perspective."~~Delenn, Babylon 5

I am kenning all I canShe and I, me and my mind,Writing hard for the one true thingThat lets you let me inBeguiling what must to gain the trust of the minutemenI am worth investing inand I never stop spinning.

Kenning yarns out of my skinWith a leaky borrowed penSwirling stars and stories inWill you let the light leak in?